ALICE. Whose stuff will we print in it besides our own? If we could only
get something from some of the great living ones! But we can't hope for
more than one or two things from them, at most, perhaps nothing, unless
we prove a great success.
GEORGE. You doubt our success? You lack egotism, my dear. I have already
a poem, by one of our greatest living English poets. It's written in
Italian.
MAUD. Of course it's beautiful.
GEORGE. Of course, everything of his is.
ALICE. Strange that he should send you a poem written in Italian. It's
beautiful, you say--I didn't know that you read Italian?
GEORGE. I don't--Palidino read it to me. I asked him what it meant, what
it was about. He said that he did not understand its meaning--but the
sound of it, as he was reading it, was magnificent. It is a masterpiece!
Its meaning is clear to me--Palidino understands nothing which is really
fine. The poem tells by its sound that the poet writes of love, the love
which is perfected by death.